57 Indian firms in Forbes list of top global companies

Forbes has released its “Global 2000 lists” in which as many as 57 Indian companies have been included. The rankings have been complied on the basis of composite score of sales, profits, assets and market capitalization.

All the three top Indian firms have improved their ranks considerably with Reliance having a sales of $45.3 billion ranked 121st in the list with public entities, State Bank of India Group (136, $29.1 billion), Oil & Natural Gas Corp. (172, 22.6 billion) and Indian Oil (243, $52.1 billion) taking the next three places among the Indian firms. Other companies in India's top ten were ICICI Bank (288, $13.2 billion), NTPC (348, $10.8 billion), Coal India (418, $10.4 billion), Bharti Airtel (453, $9.3 billion), Larsen & Toubro (499, $9.8 billion) and Tata Motors (512, $20.2 billion).

According to Forbes the Global 2000 companies have combined revenue of 32 trillion dollars, 2.4 trillion dollars in profits, 138 trillion dollars in assets and 38 trillion dollars in market capitalization. The Asia-Pacific region led The Global 2000 again this year with 701 companies, including the most additions (11) to the list of the regions - Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East & Africa-EMEA, the Americas and the U.S. - with doubled profits, by far the biggest increase. The biggest profit centre was China, as 121 companies, including Petro China, ICBC and Sinopec, returned an aggregate profit of $168 billion. Japan and South Korea also showed impressive gains in profits and assets.

With the U.S. economy back on its feet, growing at a steady 3 percent clip over the past 12 months, American firms on The Forbes Global 2000 are growing far faster. Total sales were up 12 percent in 2010 over 2009, and profits continue to rise-up 69 percent, versus 56 percent for the S&P 500. Still, the U.S. grip on The Global 2000 has been slipping since 2004, when the number of US constituents was 751. It's now 536. The U.S. still accounts for the most firms among the top 100 with 28.